15 Unusual Uses for Common Household Items

Read on to learn which common household items can be used in more than one way around the house.

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Lemons

You can use lemons to keep fruit like apples or pears from browning, but they can also be used to sanitize a chopping block and even soothe sore throats.

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Newspaper

Have some tomatoes that aren't ready to eat quite yet? Wrapping tomatoes in newspaper can help them ripen faster.

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Rubber Bands

If you're going back and forth between outside and inside your house, you can tie a rubber band around the door knob to prevent the lock from closing. You can also use rubber bands to keep dresses from falling off of hangers in your closet.

Use coffee grounds as fertilizer on flowers like azaleas and rhododendrons. Coffee grounds can also help to get rid of fridge odors. Just store the grounds in an old margarine container with holes poked in it.

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Rubber Gloves

Wet rubber gloves and rub them against upholstery to remove cat hair. Rubber gloves are also ideal to help give you a better grip when opening a stubborn jar.

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Shower Caps

Packing tip: Use the shower caps from hotel bathrooms to wrap up the dirty bottoms of shoes so that they won't mess up the rest of your clothes in the suitcase.

There are so many household items that can work overtime in your house, and you may not even realize it. Toothpaste and lemon? They can help you clean. Old coffee grounds? They can help to remove the odors from your fridge. So, before you toss some of these items or banish them to the miscellaneous drawer, learn how they can be helpful in numerous other ways!